Answer is No
by Will Peterson
Summary: Here is a collection of small pieces inspired by John Green characters, starting with a very short poem about Alaska and the haunting phrase she said shortly before her death.
1. Answer is No

_Well, there were originally line breaks between the stanzas but I can't figure out how to do that on this website. Anyway . . . ._

Answer is No

"To be continued?" She thought so.

But the answer is no.

A small question and smaller answer,

Yet they represent the end of her.

"To be continued?" she asked.

Yeah, I know those weren't her last.

But those are the words that come to mind

When thinking about the night she died.

"To be continued?" She told him that.

I wonder what she was getting at.

Would she have said it if she had known,

The answer would turn out as no?


	2. Take Me With You, Margo

_To my astonishment, I discovered earlier today that Paper Towns has its own category on this website. (So do Abundance of Katherines and Fault in our Stars.) I guess I probably should put this poem in the Paper Towns section, but I'm putting it here anyway because I feel uncomfortable with all my one-part things scattered about. I'd much prefer to keep them in one place. I'm sorry._

_Anyway . . ._

Take Me with You, Margo

Take me with you, Margo Roth Spiegelman

Because I don't want the paper life either

School then work then death, everything planned

It's desolate and I want to be freer.

I want to leave the house of society

And live apart from the weight of expectations,

Drink in the world and be no one but me.

No enduring the rules that try my patience.

But of course I know you wouldn't take me.

I am not like Quentin Jacobsen.

You used to think he was so cowardly,

But then you found the hero within.

There is no depth beneath my surface.

I can't even leave this home on my own.

I want to, but it makes me feel so nervous.

I know I could never make it alone.

I'd need help because I've never been brave.

I'd need someone to hold my trembling hands.

But who would come to take me away,

And drag my dead weight across the land?

You are smarter and stronger than me, Margo.

You paved the way to your own escape.

You see a world that I'll never know.

I will be trapped in paper for all my days.


	3. Wake Up to TFIOS

_This piece was inspired by my own reading of TFIOS and my subsequent Google searching, but the conversation and speakers below are fictional._

**Wake Up to TFIOS**

I sat in my bedroom with my phone pressed to my ear, leaning my chair on its two back legs as I waited for him to pick up. When he finally did, he groaned, "Oh, god, what are you doing up so early? Is it Apocalypse Day already?"

"Yes, the world is burning down outside my window as we speak," I said without missing a beat. "Listen, I just read this book called _The Fault in Our Stars _and –"

"Is this really something you needed to wake me for?"

"Yes, my dear, I was desperate to hear your voice. Anyway, there's this scene where one character asks another to recite poetry to him and she just happens to have a beautiful one memorized. Man, I used to think I was so intelligent and well-read, but now I feel distinctly outclassed."

"You say that about almost every book you read."

"That's because it keeps happening."

"The voices of characters," he muttered, "come from professional writers. What else do you expect?"

"I expect nothing less, of course. But here's the thing: You know how I usually feel down after reading about people who are way smarter than me? Well, this time –"

"You feel _especially_ down?" he guessed.

"No, I felt totally inspired! I wanted to find a poem that I could memorize and then recite to you."

"_You_ are trying something stereotypically romantic? _You? _Apocalypse Day has come after all!"

"So I went onto Google –"

"Oh, never mind. The world is in order."

"I typed 'love poems' into the search bar and got crap in return," I almost yelled. "The search results were all stuff like 'FREE LOVE POEMS' in capital letters; and things like 'love poems for her' and 'love poems for him' and 'love poems to download to your phone' – as if words are a freaking commodity or something."

"Well, they are sometimes. That book you read is a pack of words and it's a commodity."

"Yeah, but words are not a commodity in the way that _stuff_ is a commodity. Words are . . . more. I mean, seriously, I found that apparently one of the most common searches having to do with love poems is '_short_ love poems.' You know what that tells me? It tells me that nobody has any feeling for what they're doing."

"You know, a poem doesn't have to be long in order to be good."

"I know that. That's not what I'm saying. The thing is that these people aren't searching for a poem that manages to beautifully convey so much in so little. They just want to take part in a convention. They don't care about poetry so much as they care about making themselves look sophisticated, and doing it quickly and conveniently."

He told me, "I think you are over-analyzing a thing again."

"I am not. Do you want to know the worst part?"

"No, I don't want to know."

"I will tell you anyway. It's all so _bad._ I found a bunch of sites that list the titles like a grocery list, and you click on a title and you get something like, 'Your eyes are so pretty. Your hair is so soft. You give me hope.' Or it's like, 'I love you so much that if my love were an ocean it would be the biggest ocean ever.' Or it's like, 'I like listening to you breathe. I like feeling your heartbeat. Your bodily functions are just so fascinating to me.' The ones that rhyme are a mess of cliches wrapped in awkward word choice. The ones that don't rhyme are basically the same thing."

I know nobody likes a complainer, but it had been bugging me so much. I called him up because I knew he wouldn't hold it against me. He was the only one who wouldn't. Nevertheless, the further I went into the rant, the more I started to feel that maybe it was pointless after all. Who cared if some random people didn't share my taste in poetry? I began to feel bad about waking him up for this.

"I just wonder where John Green found that poem," I finally concluded, much deflated by that time.

"Well, I bet he didn't find it on _Google_. The problem I see here is that these search engines are meant to help the average person and you are far snobbier than average. I say that affectionately, by the way. But what is the poem that brought this all on anyway? The one you saw in the John Green book, I mean."

"Oh, it goes like . . . _Let us go then, you and I. When the evening is spread out against the sky . . ."_

I stopped, but he told me to go on. After I had recited the whole thing, he was silent for several moments. Then he said, "It's lovely. Did you happen to have the book open in front of you or did you actually memorize that?"

"I considered it worth memorizing."

"Whew! You don't even remember birthdays half the time. If you had that one in your head already, why did you have to search Google for something else?"

"I thought you wouldn't like it," I said in a small voice. "You never like anything that I like."

"Oh, come on, kiddo," he said. He called me kiddo even though I was taller and older than him. He thought it was funny. "I like you. Surely you like yourself too. Besides, under that line of thinking, wouldn't you have thought that I'd love all the crap you found?"

"Yeah, but not _that_ much crap."

"Well." He yawned. "At any rate, you've told me a poem. Are you happy now? I'd like to go back to sleep."

"Yeah, sure. Thanks for listening."

"Good night – morning – whatever it is. I love you."

"I l-lo-lo – yeah, you too."

"Oh, you're allergic to affection again. Good; everything's back to normal." I could hear his smile as he hung up.

END


	4. for will grayson

_It appears that _Will Grayson, Will Grayson_ isn't a category on this website. Therefore I decided to stick this poem here with the John Green stuff, even though it's actually about David Levithan's Will and not John Green's Will._

I Want to Marry Will Grayson

Reading about Will was like reading about me.

He painted for me a cold, grey world,

Where time exists only to be killed,

Where everyone moves and you just watch,

And the future looks like the present

And both are just a cloudy wasteland.

How did I not meet him in that world?

Perhaps we traveled it as one person.

He was so lonely, he was happy to fall in love

With someone he'd never even met.

He felt he was heartless, destined for misery.

I saw his assurances of doom,

His feelings of worthlessness,

The cloying pain and ensuing crude humor,

It was me. Everything was me.

Even the habitual, soulless masturbation.

Yes, every detail was me.

I wanted to dive right into the book,

Show up at his door, and promise to love him forever.

We're both messed up – no one's ideal lover.

But I would've taken my whole heart,

And poured it into making it work with him.

He's just a fictional character.

And I've loved real people since him.

But I'm glad to have known him through the pages.

I feel he would've known me too.

Even before I told him my name,

I'd describe the cold grey world of misery,

And he'd know exactly who I was.

It must exist in real life.

There must be people who know this world,

And would also like a hand to hold.

That peace Will tried to find with Isaac,

That peace everyone tries to find with others,

I don't know if I'll ever see it.

But if someone was able to write about Will,

For now I'll hold out some hope.


	5. Colin's Formula

Colin's Relationship Formula Says My World Ends Today

"So," my beloved said to me one day. "Do you remember back in September when we tried out that formula from _An Abundance of Katherines?_"

"Yeah," I answered. We hadn't fully understood the graph, but in the end we'd decided it meant he was to dump me on a certain date.

"Today's the day," he said.

"So it is. Yet we're still together."

"Yes, well, actually . . ."

I felt afraid for a second, but then I saw him smile at me.

"The thing is that I've met this Icelandic athlete who's way hotter than you," he told me, completely deadpan. "We've decided to run away together, adopt a pet walrus, join the circus and become master trapeze artists."

I feigned outrage. "How could you do this to me? I gave you years of my life."

"I'm sorry. I can't help it. I'm just so attracted to that bodybuilder's bodily build."

"Oh, curse my lack of well-defined muscles! Darling, what can I ever do to keep you?"

"There's nothing you can do. The trapeze is calling me. You and those gorgeous eyes of yours just can't compare."

"Oh, get out of here already. Run to your circus and your new lover and stop breaking my heart."

With a grand wave of his arm, he left the room. Seconds later, he came back in.

"The bodybuilder dumped me for a clown," he announced. "Curse my inability to juggle. Will you take me back?"

I grinned. "I will."

He sat down beside me and took my hand out of habit. "Do you think this thing counts as a separate relationship? Should we try Colin's formula again?"

"No need," I said. "I can see our future just fine as it is."


	6. The Alaska Question

My Take on the Eternal Alaska Question

Accident or suicide?

Was she sad enough to die?

She clouded herself in smoke.

Perhaps in that instant she broke.

But I picture a girl driving blind,

That ran into death in the night.

I envisioned a drunken accident,

Even before knowing what that meant.

After so long spent on this fixation,

I realized the paths have implications.

To call it an accident is to say

That she was helpless on that day.

Her life was taken from her by force.

Do I still want to take that course?

Suicide means she had her way.

It was her choice not to stay.

I still say accident over suicide,

Because I'd hate to think she wanted to die.

But I know that saying it wasn't her plan

Takes all the power out of her hands.

Did she have a choice when she was hurt?

Which way would make the matter worse?


	7. Mindless Rambling

Mindless Rambling

I wanna find love on a road trip.

Or at least I want to find fearlessness.

I go not to seek a Great Perhaps, but a lifetime of little ones.

Give me a van and I'll name it.

Let me turn it into a biosphere, so I can keep going forever.

Let me live forever in an adventure.

Not the monotony we all seemed doomed for,

Where the days are assembly lines,

And the lives are hamster wheels.

I wanna live like I'm in a story.

Characters have always felt more alive than I,

Or anyone I've ever known.

I want their friendships and romances.

I want the excitement of their plot-filled lives.

Just let me live inside a book, is all I'm saying.

That's all I would ever need.


End file.
